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Comment by taylodl | Hacker News Reader

The young are falling out of love with cars because they're unaffordable. It's as simple as that. It's yet another sign the standard of living is declining for the young.

The average new car price in the U.S. is now over $47K (Consumer Reports). I make a good living and I'm not going to pay that kind of money for a new car! A young person would be stupid to pay that kind of money for a car.

Okay, so what about used cars? The average used car price in the U.S. is now over $28K (KBB). That's more than I've ever paid for any new car I've ever bought!

What does that look like for a monthly breakdown? The finance costs for $28K is $525 per month. The average car insurance is $130 per month (US News). The average fuel costs are $100 per month (1,000 miles per month, 35 MPG fuel consumption and a fuel cost of $3.50 per gallon). Finally, the average maintenance costs are $25 per month (Consumer Reports). That cost goes up as the car gets older and doubles after the car is 10 years old, according to Consumer Reports.

Add it all up and that's $780 per month. Now ask yourself, with those costs are you really surprised to hear the young are falling out of love with cars?

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It's meaningless to talk about prices over time without normalising them to something like income of the group over that same time or at least inflation. E.g. if you look at the price of gas that way it really hasn't changed much in the last 50 years but mpg has gotten a lot better. I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar "not really that different" story for new cars.

Used car prices have really went nuts since mid 2020 though, well beyond what can be normalised out. I'm not sure that's long enough to explain the phenomena on it's own, it certainly started before young people wanted to buy cars in 2021, but if you're looking for where it got more expensive for young drivers the very recent used car price explosion is it.

It's also meaningless to talk about these things without considering the other costs at play. Even if the car : income ratio remains the same but if the housing : income ratio changes that's going to change if people are buying cars.

The income of this group has been declining because fewer teens work.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2017/article/teen-labor-force-p...

There are plenty of very high quality vehicles available for purchase at less than $47k for new and $28k for used.

The average sale price is skewed by people choosing luxury purchases by buying larger (and fancier) than necessary vehicles. Also can be skewed by vehicles lasting longer in the first place, meaning poorer people do not need to buy cars as often, but richer people can choose to buy cars more often.

That helps a little, but still makes care ownership prohibitively expensive for young people. You're still looking at $350 per month for a 5 year old or newer vehicle, i.e. one that's reliable and has lower maintenance (and aggravation) costs.

That still leaves you paying a little over $600 per month. From that point as you start lowering your finance costs you're going to increase your maintenance and aggravation costs.

There are plenty of reliable 15-year old cars. (My wife drives a reliable 18-year old, 225K mile car. We took it on a 1600 mile roundtrip for the winter holidays this year with no particular fear that it wouldn't run like a top for the entire trip.)

The idea that cars are only reliable for 5 years and 60K miles is, IMO and IME, quite out-dated. That was more true in the days of carburetors, points-based ignition, and mazes of vacuum lines. A modern (meaning post-1996 at least) electronic fuel-injected car with electronic ignition and closed-loop fuel control tends towards very reliable for 15+ years and 200K+ miles.

There is a very interesting thing happening in the "car knowledge space". At least for young people.

Myself and a few of my friends drive exclusively Honda/Toyota and drive them to 200k and then sell them to people who know how to do their own car work.

A few of my friends are from well off families and they buy cars brand new and drive them to 60-80k and then act like the car isnt reliable anymore for some reason despite the fact that I usually buy my car with 60-80k miles on it.

* all distance here is miles sorry for confusion

New buyers often have the ability to write off the purchase which gives them a substantial discount.

Write it off what?

If the car is purchased for a business you can write off the depreciation.

I do not see how that is applicable in a discussion about young people at large being able to afford cars for personal use.

It is relative to the context of the comment of why people might buy new vehicles when it does not appear to make economic sense.

I should also point out, and this is something I only learned recently, you can't get a car loan for a car that's over 10 years old.

About five years ago my mechanic told me there was a Lexus I needed to look at. Single (obsessive) owner, extremely low miles for the year, extremely clean, my mechanic had done all the work since the time the vehicle was no longer under the Lexus service and warranty.

The catch? It was over 10 years old. That's when I learned you can't get a loan for a car that's over 10 years old. I had the wherewithal to pay cash (it was over $10K for the car, but it was a steal!) but that's not something young people are going to be able to do.

Not true. I did it recently for a 20 year car through a credit union. Just paid a slightly higher interest rate.

I just bought a 2007 F-150 and financed it through my credit union with no issues. Granted, it was $6000 so I only financed it because I didn't want to dip into savings, and it's pretty hard to find a manual transmission pickup in that price range that's clean with below 130k miles.

An inability to get a loan on them would tend to make cars over 10 years artificially cheap/a better value than otherwise.

That's true, so long as you have the means for getting the money, which most young people don't.

I have a 15 year old, 20 year old, and 25 year old vehicle.

They're very reliable.

They're also not for sale.

>They're also not for sale.

There's a famous economics paper on this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

Used cars are an example of information asymmetry. If someone has a "bad" car they'll want to sell it. If they have a "good" car they'll want to keep it. Especially if both cars have the same market value because the buyer can't distinguish between the good and bad cars.

Vehicles in areas of the country with snow and salt also used to routinely rust out in about 5 years.

That 18-year old CR-V lived its entire life in snowy New England (upstate NY, then NH, now MA) and it is likely that it will be retired because of rust rather than a mechanical cause, though it will be well over 20 years old at that point.

Prior to the 1980s, very few car makers used galvanized steel. After the 1980s, most cars are galvanized, meaning they'll stay structurally sound in the snow belt far longer than before. (They'll still show some cosmetic rust long before becoming in any way unsafe.)

Yeah, I'm mostly talking about pre-80s.

That said, with my 1997 Honda del Sol that I got rid of a few years ago, the mechanics at the dealer took to coming over and looking at it because they said there were very few on the road any longer because the wheel well rusted out. (I had garaged mine in the winter for a number of years.)

To be fair no young people I ever knew bought new cars unless they were rich (i.e. top-paying job), or their family paid for it. We got crappy worn out Nissan Sentras for $2k.

Young people want fun "cheap" cars. E.g. the Miata, 86, WRX, Civic SI/type R.

All of these cars ended up with significant markups over MSRP due to COVID and some (e.g. type R) are still massively marked up.

> The young are falling out of love with cars because they're unaffordable. It's as simple as that. It's yet another sign the standard of living is declining for the young.

Have you compared to how things used to be? These numbers all seem to assume that it used to be much cheaper relative to income. That seems like a rosy look at the past but the numbers don't support that assumption.

Yes it would be dumb for a young person to pay 47K for a new car! (I'd say it's financially dumb for any person of any age, unless very rich, to pay 47K for a depreciating car.)

Since when do young people (on average) buy new cars? Aside from wealthy families, that was never a thing.

My first car cost $500 in 1988 was 20 years old with the floorboard rusting away so the road was visible through the floor while driving. And a starter that didn't work so it had to be push started every time. That's $1264 in todays dollars. That doesn't buy much, but I see a handful of beaters on craigslist that can be had for that money, and most seem nicer than the rusted beater I bought for $500.

My first new car (nothing fancy, a Mazda) cost 42% of my gross salary at the time.

A Mazda 3 can be had for $23K today, so at a similar price proportion a $55K salary would feel the same as when I bought.

So, none of it feels proportionally more expensive than 30+ years ago.

I think what is different today is the very high end of the market has grown a lot. There are endless cars over 100K whereas back in the 80s the list of hyper-expensive super cars was a very short one. Maybe this twists the perception of the market.

But the basic beater cars and new Toyota/Mazda/Honda/Kia-level cars are about as affordable as they ever were.

>But the basic beater cars and new Toyota/Mazda/Honda/Kia-level cars are about as affordable as they ever were.

In the past 3 years they've gone up an extraordinary amount, so I have some doubts on that.

I was a teenager in the 90s and would help out at a friend of my dads car lot. As a benefit they'd let me get first grab at the 'cheap beaters' that came in the lot, and before I even had a drivers license I had bought and sold around 20 cars. Things are significantly different now when looking back. First is inspections/insurance. Most of those cheap beaters back then you could buy would be in no way road legal now. At best they are parts, or you're spending thousands getting to the point of passing inspection.

Then you add in Craigslist, which is also a major change in how car buying works. Don't think of this as significantly different than how GPUs were scalped during the pandemic. There are numerous individuals that watch the common digital markets where cars are posted and quickly buy up any cheap deals, and turn them out for thousands more on a lot.

> In the past 3 years they've gone up an extraordinary amount, so I have some doubts on that.

MSRP for a 2020 Toyota Corolla was $19,600 (these would've been for sale in the fall of 2019, so fully pre-pandemic pricing).

MSRP for a 2023 Toyota Corolla is $21,550. So that's a $1950 increase (~10%) over three years. So it'a noticeable increase for sure, but I wouldn't call it extraordinary given the inflation of recent times.

> The young are falling out of love with cars because they're unaffordable. It's as simple as that.

As young person who has fallen out of love with cars (despite once having earned my money driving): It is not as simple as that.

Money plays a huge role for sure, and the more you live in an environment where cars are needed the more this is true. But living in a big european city I can assure you that for most people my age not owning a car isn't a thing you do because you couldn't afford one. The benefits of owning a car just don't outweight the cost of having to constantly think of caring for it.

Most of my daily mobility I can do on foot and with a bicycle, with the benefit that my commute takes half the time of a typical rush hour commute for the same route. I need a car if I need to transport something which is roughly once every 3 to 4 months and then renting one is a good option.

It's not just that they are unaffordable. My wife and I have two cars between us and live in the suburbs. We're concerned about climate change and trying to find ways to contribute to the problem less, so we try to drive less.

In doing that, though, I've discovered that cars are kind of miserable! Walking, biking, and riding the train are all much more pleasant ways of getting from one place to another. I feel more engaged with the world around me and more active. I also have a little kid and feel much more concerned these days about car crashes (with cars, but especially with pedestrians).

So with all that, we're trying to form a plan to move to a larger city that prioritizes other forms of transit over cars. It'll be more expensive. Although maybe it'll all even out if we stop driving?

Nailed it.

Will also add.

- Why buy a new car when one cannot afford a proper home to put it in? - Why buy a new car when one cannot be sure about their job security? - Why buy a new car when there's less of a need to be in an office every weekday?

But wait it gets better. Some car manufacturers have come up with the innovative idea to require the car's owner to pay monthly subscription to "unlock" all the features of the car they bought.

Yes, why indeed are young people losing interest in cars.

And yet, owning and driving a car (especially at the extremely cheap gas prices in the US) is still vastly less expensive than it would be if all the externalities were adequately accounted for. Society is subsidizing car ownership at high levels, and if it doesn’t feel like it – well, that just goes to show how unsustainable personal automobiles are!

(Also, your calculation doesn’t include depreciation, which people don’t often think of as a cost, but economically it absolutely is.)

I grew up with cheaper cars and never loved them either. I never really saw the point. My wife's parents collected classic vets and I have one in my garage now. It's cool, but it's work to maintain that I'm not into. I would sell it if it didn't have sentimental value for my wife.

So while I'm sure costs today have pushed people who were on the fence, there are so many other things to spend money on now. And cars are just...boring.

I think a big part of that is changing consumer preferences for larger cars and, to a lesser extent, hybrids and EVs.

As one data point, the 2004 Corolla LE's MSRP of $13,570 is $22,063 in 2023 dollars. The 2023 Corolla LE's MSRP is $21,550. And that's a larger and more featureful car.

Used cars are still really expensive though.

Yeah, I just went check for a new Honda Civic, it's what I think of when I think of "average car" and it's in the 26/27 range.

So it's gotta be partly because preferences have gone towards trucks and SUVs that are not only larger, but more expensive.

They don't even sell the old LX trim, it starts at Sport now.

My wife and I have friends who can't get their children to learn to drive despite cars being available to them with gas and maintenance paid by their parents.

I'm guessing your friends still chauffeur their kids around. If they stopped, I bet the kids would learn to drive, since their alternative to taking the wheel is to sit at home.

Now that it's become clear that services like lyft/uber are unsustainable at their current prices, the days of cheap taxis are numbered. Soon, unless you live in an urban center (or university), the only choices will be: drive yourself or walk.

I wish bikes were among the viable alternatives. But with their theft wildly out of control, pedal pushing just can't become a mainstream alternative to cars.

in the netherlands people just bike or take public transport, most of the time its faster than car (up to 12km or so bike is actually much faster)

walk is actually fine as well

I don't understand how bike can be faster than car. Does it take a long time to get parked or something?

The average speed for a car in cities is often under 20km/hour, especially in rush-hour. My average commute is 9km, I do that in just shy of 30 minutes, so something approaching 20km/hour. Plus, with the bike, I can take a few shortcuts that are unavailable to a car. I also park right in front of the building on both ends. My commute is faster and more predictable by bike than by car.

Yes. If you prioritize the environment for people over vehicles, then vehicles take longer to store and travel at slower speeds.

That statistic is in a specific context, I'd guess city driving in the daytime.

Nederlands has a lot of cycle infrastructure and is mostly flat so it's very convenient to ride. But lots of people still drive for all the usual practicality reasons.

Owning a car/not owning a car is to at least some degree an economic decision.

But I literally could not have done my first job without being able to drive to job sites. And I couldn't really have worked at the next company in an office park either. To say nothing of countless recreational activities and vacations I've done that required me to drive.

I've spoken to friends with teenagers and they've told me their kids aren't excited about getting a driver's license but understand it's a probably a practical necessity.

If a job requires you to drive between many places with your own vehicle you are effectively taking a pay cut. They are offloading the costs of their job onto you.

To me your statement logically is worded something like: "I require a car because I require a car"

Whenever I've had to drive on business--other than commuting--there's always been a mileage allowance which I expensed. Or I had a rental car and was paid for rental and gas.

But, yes, there are also many company locations out in suburban office parks that are generally not accessible if you don't have a car.

Even if I had a company car, I'd still have to be able to drive. Lots of jobs require being able to drive.

A great many teenagers will be in situations (especially after college) where they want or even need to drive a car. So it makes sense to "encourage" them to get a driver's license before there's an urgent need.

Should just let things happen naturally, forcing things on children tend to push them against the idea.

When they wanted to drive, then they'll learn to drive with great passion.

Why do they want their children to learn to drive?

Probably so they don't have to personally drive them everywhere. My mother has a coworker who has a 22 year old daughter who is essentially unemployable because she can't drive and therefore can't get to work and can't afford to move to a place where walking/transit is an option. The family has a spare car.

The problem in your example is quite clearly not whether she currently knows how to drive. This is a skill that is trivial to acquire (given that there's a spare car, and if it's North America, driving schools are plentiful and a barely detectable pulse is sufficient qualifications for a driver's licence).

The actual problem is two-fold: parents who enable this dependency by offering rides and don't charge rent; and the daughter who evidently has no personal need whatsoever for a driver's licence. If she doesn't want a job, why would she care that she can't drive to one?

The vast, vast, majority of the population lives within biking or public transport distance of some shit corner store for a kid to work in. Right now most of them are hiring. 10 weeks of part time labor is enough to buy a fairly old 49cc scooter, which in many states requires no license.

Because, per my other comment, whether or not they want to/need to own a car, being able to drive one is a pretty essential life skill. If nothing else, if you can't/won't drive, you'll be cut off from a lot of employment opportunities.

No, it absolutely is not an essential life skill. They will learn it if it becomes advantageous for them to learn it. I understand offering, I don't understand insisting if they say they don't want to.

I'll disagree somewhat.

If they're planning on becoming a lifetime Manhattanite who rarely leaves the city sure. (Substitute international locations.) Sure.

But I think parents insisting that not being able to drive is a poor life choice for a bunch of reasons--that they're not going to support through driving their kid around--seems pretty reasonable.

Strictly in terms of employment (and even job interviews in my experience) the ability to rent a car, even if not owning a car, is pretty common.

A need for driving can arise much more quickly than you can learn and get licensed. So many teenagers assume they're going to live in places with dense public transportation networks, but it will take decades to build enough housing and transit for them. The economic winners will get to live their desired lifestyle of density and transit, and the rest will find themselves awkwardly bridging the lag between our aspirations and our infrastructure.

"The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed."

If they're American, then there is something like a 95%+ chance that they NEED to know how to drive.

I have a friend who only reluctantly learned to drive at 22 despite living in a car dependent suburb. It blew my mind.

It's also a tacky and gaudy display of wealth just for a rapidly depreciating asset built at an environmental cost for a function a lot of us don't need that much. I'm not young, but I don't care about cars in the slightest and can't wait for a post car society whatever that might look like.

I think it largely comes down to perspective, interests, and way of life.

I honestly have trouble imagining a happy life without a vehicle. It enables me to go places I want to go, where there is no public transportation nor would I want there to be.

On top of that, there's the utility of being able to build things like homes and shelter.

Car-sharing and ride-sharing exist now in addition to public transit. Vehicles can exist without personal ownership of one.

Yeah, I totally agree rentals exist. Maybe it is a semantics difference with what a post-car society means to people.

To me, it does not imply using a car as much as I do now and simply paying more to rent instead of owning.

Really depends on the person, if they're hobby is working/driving cars like enthusiasts it doesnt really make sense to look down on them. For some people a car is more than an utility.

"A lot of us dont need cars"? what an biased onesided view of the world, how travelled are you? Because outside of your soy latte zones vehicles are a huge need for day to day life.

> The average new car price in the U.S. is now over $47K (Consumer Reports). I make a good living and I'm not going to pay that kind of money for a new car! A young person would be stupid to pay that kind of money for a car.

I think what you mean is that enough Americans are stupid enough with money to pay 47k$ for a car (or worse, a 15mg truck/jeep), plenty of $15-25k cars exist, 45k$ cars just look cheaper with 5-7 years financing.

Run through all the numbers I ran through. The only number you're adjust is financing - which is a big number, but my financing number was based on $28K. Financing $20K drops you to $600, which is still expensive. Get much cheaper than $20K and you're starting to drive up your maintenance costs while you drive down your financing costs. Those maintenance costs come with several other ancillary costs (aggravation, paying for transportation while car is being serviced, missing work, etc.)

As I responded in other comments, my calculation didn't even take into account for parking, registration, and vehicle emissions testing costs. Young people are looking at the delta to their monthly expense outlay for getting a car and it's quite considerable.

Last time I shopped (admittedly 8 years ago) there were tons of entry level, cheap Toyotas and Hondas that were only a year or two old with under 20k miles for $10-15k.

I think that outside of the US the reason is that _in most cases_ you just don’t need cars. They’re more of a hassle and take up a lot of space.

That's not at all true in the industrialized world. Gibraltar is maybe one place you might not need a car, it's a tiny country with a bus reaching everywhere. Yet there are 1444 cars per 1000 people.

If you look at cars/1000 people though the US is top with 890 sure, but New Zealand, Canada, Finland, Austrailia, Poland, Italy are all above 750.

France, Germany, UK, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Japan are all above 600.

Switzerland especially is often cited as a great example of how a well run public transport system works, yet 82% of people have a car

> _in most cases_

I'm in my mid 30s, lived in 5 different countries (incl. UK, Austria, Poland, Portugal) and use a car perhaps 4 times per month (cab, when I'm feeling lazy).

Again, I put the emphasis there for a reason: I'm not saying that we don't need cars _at all_. What I'm saying is that we need _much fewer_ cars and there are many people like me. When I need to take a longer trip, I rent a cab. It costs me a fraction of what I'd need to pay if I drove.

Owning a car is a bit like watching TV vs. YT/VoD: it's partially driven by habits (also generation, culture, social status). I'm not speaking in absolute terms here. With better infrastructure we could reduce the need even further.

"Owning a car is a bit like watching TV vs. YT/VoD: it's partially driven by habits"

This.

Thank you, 50+, living in Germany, never owned a car (have a drivers license), never going to own a car.

When friends say "we need a car" they mean that they moved outside the city in a big house but want to go to the city every day and drive their children to a sports club every second day. Sure they "need a car". It's like I go diving and I "need an oxygen tank". Yes, sure, if you go diving.

You use the word most. But reality is most adults have cars in all those countries. Cars are expensive, if they didn't need one they wouldn't have one.

These include countries with very good public transport. Japan, Switzerland etc.

You are very much in the minority.

for many people cars are a luxurious convenience. they also enable bad behavior and come at a terrible cost for everyone, including non-drivers. the reasons for this are manifold, but the problem is, that often there are no practical alternatives because we build our society around car dependency. this creates a dependency spiral: it's hard to quit cars, so people don't (even try), and because everyone has cars, we build infrastructure for it.

it is possible to get out of it in certain areas, usually cities - but even if one manages, they still have to pay the cost: not just the financial burden, the health problems, but also the reduction in safety (especially for kids) and quality of living. vienna has excellent public transport and the car ownership rate is less than 400 per 1000 inhabitants. of those 400, how many are necessary and how many are just out of convenience?

as for my (austrian) country-dwelling extended family: every adult owns their own car, but i'd estimate at least every second car is not strictly necessary.

> the reasons for this are manifold, but the problem is, that often there are no practical alternatives because we build our society around car dependency.

This. I think what got lost in translation in the discussion between iso1631 and me is that we read the phrase "we don't need cars" differently. We need cars because we're making ourselves need them more than we should.

> Cars are expensive, if they didn't need one they wouldn't have one.

I know so many people, even in places like London or Vienna, so with extremely good transport systems, who bought expensive cars because that's what most people in their families do. Sometimes it's a status symbol, sometimes a pattern people fall into due to upbringing. It's similar, although not identical to people in their 20s or 30s owning a TV set yet spending most of their screen time on their phones or laptops.

And, again, this is not a binary issue. The point I'm trying to convey here is that:

1. cars are useful, but

2. it's perfectly plausible to have a _significantly smaller_ amount of cars than we do and it would be a net improvement

3. with improvements in both transport systems (3.1) and _also_ education (3.2, also sic!) we get more people closer to 2.

4. 3.1. and 3.2 can be done in parallel, which means that now, more people than we think _don't_ need cars

We're not there yet but were getting there.

> You are very much in the minority.

Of course, what made you think I implied otherwise? I feel like our discussion started with a big misunderstanding of each other's opinion earlier in the thread.

Even in the US, cars have an additional expense when living in the city: parking. I didn't even include parking fees in my monthly car ownership expenses calculation. In some US cities parking can be $20-$40 per day. I happen to live in an area where I can purchase parking for $80 per month, but as I said, that's an additional expense you have to tack on to the list. That makes owning a used car a proposition costing over $800 per month!

> It's yet another sign the standard of living is declining for the young.

Or maybe a reflection of higher expectations? Housing, healthcare, and vehicles are all examples of things that both cost more and are much more advanced than the same version previous generations had.

Also young people are living in cities more than previous generations and those cities are denser. The value prop of a car, price aside is less than it was for previous generations.

Cars and healthcare are debatable, but with housing you're literally buying the same houses as the previous generation, just way more expensive.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4518-Rosedale-Ave-Austin-...

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1339-46th-Ave-San-Francis...

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/677-Harmony-Ln-Ashland-OR...

The economic value of a location changes over time, so the land component of the house is not the same. Plus increases in population can dramatically shift supply and demand curves.

Sure, but basically all desirable places to live now are expensive, which wasn't the case before.

I'm not sure about the exact causes, but at some level it has to be supply and demand, I agree. Maybe just growing population. Certainly the bay area is, in my opinion, very over-populated.

It's a magical physical location, and there's too many people that want to live in it, for it to be pleasant.

(Though the horrible government also isn't helping.)

They don't want cars or even to drive. They have all the creature comforts at home. Big TV's, internet games, and food delivery.

It's also a financial literacy problem. Financing a rapidly depreciating asset like a car is a very poor choice, and maybe younger people are waking up to this. You're basically underwater as soon as you drive a new car off the lot. If you have to have a car, buy a used one for cash.

I don't understand why people are so against financing. Sure, buying a new car isn't wise, but even now with 5-6% interest rates you're likely still coming out ahead if you finance a car and invest the rest.

It's like a credit card. They are easily misused, but there's not really a downside if you use them responsibly.

Anybody able to beat the interest rate on the car loan plus depreciation rate consistently year over year should probably start their own hedge fund.

Not to mention that if you do decide on an old and affordable car, it's offset by the price of its constant repairs and the anxiety that it could break down again at any moment.

You just need to do your research first. I recently bought a 2001 Corolla with 200k miles. I felt confident because it has a timing chain, no belt to snap. Manual transmission which is bulletproof, just needs a new clutch every now and then. And it’s a a common car so it’s easy and cheap to find spare parts.

This era is probably the sweet spot for reliable cars. Post 2010 cars have gotten extremely complicated both mechanically and electronically. Manual / slushbox auto transmissions are difficult to find, replaced with CVTs which are extremely unreliable and for some reason unrepairable (usually needing a full replacement), or DCTs which are slightly better but nowhere near as reliable as a manual or slushbox. And significantly more expensive to fix.

In 15-20 years the used car market isn’t going to look like it does today. Modern ICEs aren’t going to last. However, I’m looking forward to used electric cars as they age. The mechanics are much simpler which only leaves the electronics, and more people are going to become competent with diagnostics and repair in step with the popularity of electric cars.

What kind of research could you possibly do that will help resolve this? And even if you can is everyone supposed to buy those cars? This only scales for a small amount of peolle.

I've exclusively owned vehicles from the time period. They've all been around 120k miles when I got them. They aren't any more reliable than any others. They've all had issues that caused me problems. Some of them have even been incredibly difficult to diagnose. I've never put more than about 10k miles on any of them. In part because I couldn't trust them to get my home

> What kind of research could you possibly do that will help resolve this?

You look at all the cars within your budget and rule out red flags, for me it’s timing belts and CVT transmissions. Then Google the rest and look at the common problems.

> And even if you can is everyone supposed to buy those cars? This only scales for a small amount of peolle.

This is no different to anything else in life. People who do their due diligence more often than not end up in better situations. I don’t really understand what your point is here, that no one should do due diligence because it can’t work if everyone does it?

Sometimes you start off with a budget of $1k in the outskirts of town and have to just do with what your options are to be a functional member of society.

I was able to do my due diligence and bought an old Volvo, and we knew a mechanic who specialized in Volvos, but even if it's not an expensive repair like a timing belt, the repairs will still be more frequent. And I think this situation will get worse for the next generation as it's more common to have proprietary parts and tooling, drastically increasing the cost of repairs as time goes on (which also makes self repairs a lot more difficult).

I see people pulling numbers like this, and I'm not saying I don't believe you, but in my experience, owning a car has been far cheaper than what most estimate.

I bought a 3 year old used car in '09 for $14500 for cash. Since then I've spent a grand total of about $3000 on repair and maintenance. My insurance is about $700 / yr. I spend about another ~ $650 / yr on gas. My total costs have been less than $2500 / yr all in.

You're also not accounting for the value of your time. My 30 minute commute to the office would turn into at least 90m on public transit. That's just one example. It's death by a thousand cuts. At even 1/3rd of hourly rate that most of us make, the cost in lost time is tens of thousands a year.

Average car price doesn't make sense to compare to marginal car price. A new Corolla is still 21k.

That moves the monthly cost from $780 to $650. That's still an expensive proposition.

How are you calculating that? If I plug 22k into a random auto loan calculator like https://www.bankofamerica.com/auto-loans/auto-loan-calculato... I do not get 650 a month, I get 421 with the current high interest rates.

You can love things even if you can't afford them. Not all cars are $28k, you can get a piece of junk for much cheaper, you can work for the privilege of using someone else's car, with enough motivation, even if you are poor, you can get to drive, while dreaming about your having very own car. Owning a car may become a life goal, the ultimate reward for hard work. And it was kind of the case a few decades ago.

But now, the young don't want to dedicate their lives to the car anymore. They have other priorities, other dreams. Maybe they prefer to let go of the car and eat good food instead of a cheap pasta diet, things like that.

> Okay, so what about used cars? The average used car price in the U.S. is now over $28K (KBB). That's more than I've ever paid for any new car I've ever bought!

That's more than I've spent on buying, taxing, insuring, MOTing, and repairing every car I have owned since I passed my driving test nearly 30 years ago.

We live in an age of ubiquitous information. It has never been easier to learn how to repair things. Why would you pay more than most new cars cost, when you could pick up some shiter for a few hundred, run it until it breaks, and then figure out how to repair it from a couple of youtube videos?

> Why would you pay more than most new cars cost, when you could pick up some shiter for a few hundred, run it until it breaks

In this thread and IRL it seems people are deathly afraid of a car breaking down. When I bought my most recent car (2001 Corolla) people were like “ooh what if it breaks down”. Wow, IDK, maybe I’ll fix it? Or maybe I’ll junk it. Still cheaper than buying a newer car. And it’s not as if newer cars are immune from problems. If anything, newer cars seem both less reliable and less repairable due to the ever increasing complexity. The cost to repair the CVT transmission in a 2017 Subaru is twice the cost of my entire car and their failure rate is through the roof.

Exactly. I drive a 25-year-old Range Rover. I get a lot of "Oh but what if it breaks down?" Well, I have tools in the boot. Also, a couple of times a week I look underneath to see if anything is hanging down that shouldn't, and look under the bonnet to see if anything is visibly out of place or pishing out fluids, and I check that there's enough of something that looks more-or-less like oil on the dipstick and enough of something that looks more-or-less like coolant in the radiator.

I'd jump in that thing and drive it anywhere, at any time, in any weather conditions, for any distance.

It's really easy to have that perspective if you already have the knowledge and wealth to do so. Right now it's winter and there is melted slushy ice everywhere. I only have street parking available where I live. My car is a cheap rusted pile of crap because that's what was affordable. It's not feasible for me to maintain my life while also going out on the street and trying to learn how to fix whatever issue went wrong (while dealing with the rust on top of it). I happen to be luckier than many people as well. My car is constantly stealing my money from me and the only reason I even can make it work is getting cheap (free) mechanical labor due to family.

> It's really easy to have that perspective if you already have the knowledge and wealth to do so.

This is exactly the problem I'm talking about. A £50 toolkit from the DIY chain of your choice and a couple of Youtube videos will get you started with at least basic maintenance like changing your oil and filters, and replacing brake pads.

> Right now it's winter and there is melted slushy ice everywhere. I only have street parking available where I live.

Yes. It sucks. No way but the hard way. I did a set of head gaskets on one of my Range Rovers during the Beast from the East in the driveway outside my house because I still needed to get to work. They went back on ridiculously clean because of the amount of time I spent inside cleaning them up and defrosting.

It sucks, but that's the way it is.

> It's not feasible for me to maintain my life while also going out on the street and trying to learn how to fix whatever issue went wrong

Yes it is.

Wow - US insurance and used car prices are crazy.

For comparison, back in December 2020 I bought a 2-year old Ford Focus with 13,000 miles on the clock for £11,500, my insurance is £25 a month, but my fuel is closer to £160 a month, for around 10k miles a year.

It helps that it's a 1 litre 3 cylinder engine (although still puts out a respectable 125bhp, which is more than enough with 6 gears for motorway driving) and on long journeys I'm getting 50mpg.

For a country that seems built around needing a car (unless you live in a city with decent public transit) it seems ridiculous so many people are now priced out of it.

I just went car shopping, and those claimed prices are definitely inflated. People that cannot "afford a car" typically just cannot afford the car they think they deserve. It's a tale as old as time.

I'm currently car shopping and these prices are in line with what I'm seeing. In my particular area, again I cited averages for the nation, it would seem you could drop each price down by $5K. As I have responded to many other comments here that's really not going to make a huge difference in your monthly outlay - especially when you consider I didn't include the costs for things like parking, vehicle registration, and vehicle emissions testing.

As a "Generation X" near the Boomer boundary, I just can't stop being shocked by "average car is $47k". When I was a teen, my parents did rental investing, owned about a dozen properties, and had never paid more than $30k for a property. I'm a well-compensated tech worker, and have no shame in driving my 2004 Volvo that I bought used 16 years ago. Had a second car for a while. A 2005 Camry that I bought for $5000 in 2017. Sold it last year for $5000.

Advice to younger generation: forego that shiny toy and invest your hard-earned money.

Most would love to, but the rent is too high and they need a car to be able to get to their job so they can tread water. Owning a primary home as a means of "lazy wealth generation" is only accessible to people with family money or career titles like "Software Engineer" and even then the homes are much lower standard than before for older people working the same job.

And all the while companies are advertising like crazy to try and hire more heavy equipment operators (starting north of 100K). There are plenty of other jobs out there besides "dog walker" and "software engineer"

Everything you said just further supports my statement of "save your money". Buy a cheap used car (but cheap over 5+ years, so get a reliable one). Rent a cheap apartment (mine is $1100/mo and is very nice).

Boomers: We need young people to save their money, they are investing unwisely.

[Zoomers stop spending money]

economy collapses, boomers investments go negative

Boomer: No, not like that!

And, yea, I know you're Gen-X from your other post, but you're talking like a Boomer at this point.

I don't disagree that young folks can harm their finances by spending gratuitously on cars.

But, I see it differently as far as long-term trends. I'm actually surprised at how stable new car prices have been, while the quality and capabilities have been expanded. Let's consider two benchmarks, because these are ones I've thought about before. I'll consider a two decade period from late 1990s to late 2010s, so also ignoring the recent pandemic market distortions.

One is a practical economy car, e.g. Toyota. The other is an entry-level, all-wheel-drive luxury/sports sedan, e.g. Audi.

A 1997 Corolla at $14k compared to a 2017 Corolla at $18k (28% increase).

A 1997 A4 at $28k compared to a 2017 A4 at $38k (35% increase).

But, this ignores that the newer cars were up-classed and almost competed with their larger sibling models from twenty years before. The 2017 Corolla and A4 were nearly as big and well equipped as the 1997 Camry and A6, respectively. To try to stay at more similar size, power, and features, consider a lower model class for the later time period.

A 1997 Corolla at $14k compared to a 2017 Yaris at $16k (14% increase).

A 1997 A4 at $28k compared to a 2017 A3 at $32k (14% increase).

During the same time period, other living expenses like housing, health insurance, and energy pretty much doubled for me in California. The median US household income also grew from $37k to $60k (62% increase) in this same time frame. So, I see the new car market as having significantly "beat inflation" in a practical sense.

As someone from the same timeframe you're missing a number of things that have happened.

Safety/pollution laws have made small cheap cars non-existent. You cannot buy anything like those 2004/2005 cars on the market today, the cheapest featureless models have mostly disappeared.

Seemingly while building the digital world that we both live in, you are missing the ramifications of the monster you created. Before the digital days I bought and sold a number of underpriced items effectively doing difficult in person arbitrage. If I wa willing to find things like cars cheap, I could make money buying them and selling them to/at dealers for more. You and I have effectively destroyed that market. Sellers of those items now can effectively make far more by understanding how much their car is worth and selling it direct to market. And, in the cases where the seller is underpriced, digital buyers monitoring the market quickly and efficiently buy up these underpriced items. This is true true for almost any investment item, there is really far more money than good investments these days which leads a huge portion of investment to be pure luck.

> As a "Generation X" near the Boomer boundary, I just can't stop being shocked by "average car is $47k".

I don't doubt the average new car price could be 47K, but averages are pushed up by the very expensive ones. And today there are a lots of cars at the very high end over 100K which skews the average.

Regular cars (entry-level Honda/Toyota/Mazda/etc) haven't gone up much, probably about tracking inflation (would be nice to see a graph for e.g. an entry level Mazda 3 (323) MSRP vs. inflation over the years).

Meh, a brand new Toyota Corolla Hybrid is $24k including fees.

Ha ha good luck with that. Dealers don't actually stock the cheap base models, and most are charging additional mark ups due to limited supply and high demand. If you want to actually purchase a Corolla Hybrid today then your total price out the door including taxes and fees will likely be over $34K.

There are cheaper new cars available, though. You can get a little penalty box like a Mitsubishi Mirage or Nissan Versa for much less.

In a time where half of the US can't afford a $1000 emergency...

Yeah, half the country wont be buying new cars. Buying used is normal.

Currently used cars are 'that' significantly cheaper than new. Add in things like interest rates on used being higher than new, and that new cars typically have very long warranties on major components and we're suddenly into the 'Boots Theory' of Socioeconomic Unfairness.

That moves the monthly cost from $780 to $720. That's still an expensive proposition.

A brand new Honda Civic comes in at $25k.

https://automobiles.honda.com/civic

That moves the monthly cost from $780 to $740. That's still an expensive proposition

Keep moving the cost down by getting progressively older cars until you hit the price you can afford.

Older cars come with higher maintenance costs and reliability issues. As you drive down the financing costs you're increasing the maintenance costs. Maintenance costs also come with aggravation costs, potential towing costs, using vacation time to deal with servicing a vehicle, and so forth.

If you have no vehicle whatsoever and you need to get one, you're looking at $500-$600 per month in total costs to get something that's reasonably reliable. As I noted in another response those costs don't even include parking. I also didn't account for things vehicle registration costs and emissions testing costs. It all adds up to make vehicle ownership quite expensive. I'm not surprised at all that young people are re-thinking the premise of owning a vehicle.

Not just that, cars are boring now .

The ford Fiesta (ST) and Focus (ST/RS) are discontinued in favor of more MPV/SUV type cars. It's such a shame because they're great cars.

What’s with this? Is it a safety thing? I despise these small SUVs, heavier, higher center of gravity, and worse aero so they use more fuel and drive like garbage. When I rent a small car I have to explicitly state give me the car I ordered and NOT “upgrade” me because it feels more like a downgrade.

It's not just that, it's that driving a car (or being driven in one) while not owning one is pretty affordable in comparison to owning a car an then not using it a lot. Which is of course what a lot of people do. They talk up the need for them to go on long journeys and how important it is to have just the right vehicle for that. But the reality is that on average people only drive about 15000 miles at best. There are some outliers of course. But they go both ways. There are lots of people that drive far less than that.

If you think about it, the prospect of getting a loan to finance some expensive vehicle that costs tens of thousands of euros/dollars and then paying loads more every month for insurance, taxes, maintenance, and fuel is not very appealing. Some people spend many hundreds of dollars of their own money every month on a thing that they arguably could do without. And then there is parking as well. Parking is not cheap in bigger cities. There are cities where you need a mortage to be able to afford to buy the right to have your own parking place.

If you add all of that up, you can free up quite a nice budget for alternative ways to get around. I use taxis/ubers when I need them. I walk short distances or use a bike (nice and its good for me). I can hop on public transport at a reasonable cost. Total cost for all of this per month is probably around 50 euros in a typical month. I have a lease bike that costs me 22/month. The rest is public transport and an occasional uber. I technically also have access to car sharing but I rarely use that. Price is similar to an Uber and Uber is more convenient for me.

So, that's my day to day travel needs covered. I don't need a car for that and here in Germany, even a really shitty old car would probably cost me way more than that. I could double or triple my uber usage and it would still be cheaper.

For longer distance, I take trains and the occasional plane. If I need a car, I rent one. Happens maybe a few times a year. Total cost for car rental would be at best a 1000-1500 in an average year (including fuel). I can't make a case for owning a vehicle to cover any of that. And I don't think I ever will.

For the future, self driving cars might add some more options and flexibility. Getting a self driving car to pick me up would allow me to be driven while I nap at night to some far away destination. Door to door service, private, comfortable, etc. No need to own a car for that. And that could probably be cheaper than a train/flight + hotel. Not that hard to build a business around having something like that with some luxury options. Why would you ever own a car if you can get something like that to pick you up to go wherever on a moment's notice? How often could you do that before it becomes cheaper to own the car? Self driving will turn car rental on its head. You don't go some place to pick up the car. You get picked up by the car.

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